How the Media Tweaks Iraq News

[Goose]

Not really anything new, but I still enjoyed reading this. Let me know what you guys think. (http://brain-terminal.com/posts/2005/11/03/how-the-media-tweaks-iraq-news)

[Wildfire]

Par for the course. If you stick to the New York or LA Times or Washington Post, it seems the military is sitting on a park bench somewhere south of Baghdad waiting for the next wave of IED's to be placed in their laps.

The media citing this as the next Vietnam War has become a self-fulfilling(sp?) prophesy. The focus is the "Butcher's Bill". We hear only of the deaths. Death in war is always saddening. Death in war is also, sadly, expected. It's what makes a war, well, war. The concept of a war is inherently death of the enemy. Whatever side you're on. It's why those that truly want peace will risk life to stop an entity from blatant evil. Saddam and his ilk committed atrocities, and planned further atrocities, on par with Hitler, Pol Pot, Kim Jong mentally-Il, Idi Amin and a host of others. The difference is those monsters were shielded from widespread media reporting and bloggers speculating on what was going on. There was nobody to "keep them honest" as it were.

During Vietnam, the focus was on how many Americans died that day. And that was pretty much all the reporting there was. Except, of course, the occasional human interest story of a rocket going astray into a school. Tragic and obviously unintended, but that's what was fed into our living rooms for years. I can't remember a single report of the schools, hospitals, etc being built by American troops. (Roads, bridges, infrastructure, these were also overlooked.)

The media then were against the war. They reported only what made the US look bad. Same today. When's the last time you saw the evening news report even 2 positives in a week? One positive in a week. One a month? Beuller? Beuller?

Now we hear about the 2,000. That's all you hear. Shit, last week reporters were writing about WHEN 2,000 would be reached. No mention of what happened that week, it was about what would happen when the toll was at about 1,992. Good call, Kreskin. You saw into the future. But never talked about what these thousands of voluteers were doing that week.

Again, it seems the media wants us to believe the military is just camped out waiting to die without doing anything around there. There is no good being done to help these people that are getting the first taste of freedom they've ever known.

Nope. The media has to remind us there are people in Iraq that aren't orgasmic about the new Constitution. Keep in mind that the US took something like 14 years to ratify ours. And we suffered a Civil War over it. Iraq ratifies one in a few months and it'll be our fault if a civil war breaks out. The media forgets it's history. But, alas, history doesn't sell ads. Integrity died with Cronkite.

The radicals that told us we were evil in the '60's have had children. The '60's have been glorified as the age of enlightenment. Now the children want to emulate it to live this bogus ideal they've bought into.

It isn't going to change any time soon. :mad:

[Matt Snowden]

Psychologically, it is understandable. The media has never been as powerful as it was when it turned the nation against the Vietnam war. Some people have a hard time letting go of their glory days. But for an industry that's already in decline, selling a product with so many obvious flaws makes about as much sense as shooting yourself in the head while you're jumping off a skyscraper.

hahah what a great way of putting it... the sad part is, its the truth